Wanna Be Nokia CEO? Take the simple quiz to see if you're qualified

Take the CEO Quiz: Could you be the new CEO of Nokia? We understand that the Nokia Board of Directors uses a very complex quiz to test out its potential CEOs. This quiz is how the Board noticed how obviously incompetent the candidate Anssi Vanjoki was, and he was rejected. This quiz is how the Board discovered the highly valued wunderkind Stephen Elop the Magnificent, who was hired to run the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer, also world's largest smartphone maker, also world's widest-reaching mobile phone ecosystem by a massive margin, and also (then) world's largest smartphone OS platform.

The questions are in the form of hypotheticals from various very different management scenarios in wildly different industries. This is the full quiz:

Question 1 - You hear that your reseller chain - the mobile operators/carriers - has gone into sales boycott because of one decision made by your company. Do you

a - apologize in public and reverse that one decision which is causing your resellers to boycott your products or

b - announce your support of a series of new technologies that the carriers specifically hate, to really infuriate them, like Dual SIM phones and Skype

Question 2 - Your smartphones have suffered years of declining average sales prices, and thus, declining profits. Suddenly in Q4 of 2010, you find that the new smartphones running the new version of Symbian, like the N8, are so big hits globally, that your average sales price jumps an unprecedented 15% - that means your company earned a bonus profit of 565 Million Euros in just one quarter or the annual equivalent of 3 Billion dollars of bonus profit. You take the bonus 565 Million Euros of pure profit, and

a - thank the Symbian team and premium Nokia smartphones designers and celebrate Nokia's huge comeback and put most of the bonus profit into promoting Symbian S^3 based phones like the N8 and E7, or

b - fire the Symbian team and a total of 7,000 Nokia software developers as incompetent fools for making profitable and highly desirable products for Nokia

Question 3 - Your company has had several recently failed flagship smartphones in the past, like N96 and N97. In June 2011, your newest flagship smartphone, the N9 is not just the hottest Nokia phone as far back as anyone can remember, it is legitimately the hottest phone the tech press has seen for at least a year by any manufacturer. Do you

a - say we will sell it immediately in every market and it will have full management support and you increase the marketing effort allocated to its launch or

b - say it will not be sold in ANY of the largest European markets where Nokia is traditionally strong, such as the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, France; and also it will not be sold in many of Nokia's biggest markets outside of Europe like Brazil, India, Indonesia, Philippines, South Africa etc.

Question 4 - Your operating system Symbian is widely seen as obsolete but the new version S^3 is released for Christmas 2010, and you find that Symbian S^3 is making a true comeback - it is both loved by consumers and is establising a Nokia record for new OS launch success. Do you

a - celebrate the sudden success and give Symbian your complete support, or

b - issue a 'burning platforms memo' full of mistakes and falsehoods which suggests Symbian is obsolete

Question 5 - You are witnessing a sales boycott of Symbian smartphones. But you also see that one of the two options for replacing Symbian is itself in boycott, as the resellers have stopped selling Microsoft WP7 based smartphones because they are punishing Microsoft for Skype. The resellers have not put MeeGo devices into a boycott, in fact they are in love with MeeGo. Do you

a - launch the N9 phone with MeeGo now in every country and carrier and market that now has a Symbian boycott, or

b - tell your resellers that in most markets there will be no MeeGo phones and all have to wait until December to see the one new smartphone made on WP7 that itself is now in boycott (replacing one boycott with another boycott)

Question 6 - You know your main operating system Symbian is growing old and needs to be replaced. You have two choices to replace it, one is MeeGo that you control but you were not sure if that will succeed in the market. The other is an operating system owned by a third party, Microsoft. MeeGo would be free to Nokia. Microsoft's WP7 is a costly license where you pay a license for every single handset using WP7 and the control of the OS's development is totally with Microsoft. Now you find that MeeGo is met with complete market love and affection and very positive support all around by the tech press. Do you

a - say you are happily surprised by the reception MeeGo is having, congratulate Nokia's MeeGo development team, and say you will support MeeGo and release it on several handsets, or

b - declare that "even if the N9 and MeeGo are a success, you will not release any more phones on it"

Question 7 - After years of attempting to match the iPhone with failed phones like the N96 and the N97, your predecessors have spectacularly failed to deliver a hit 'flagship' product. But now for Christmas 2010 you discover that you have in the latest flagship handset, the N8, for the first time in many years a true hit product - so hot, it sets an internal record for biggest new Nokia phone launch ever, selling 4 million units in only three months. Do you

a - celebrate the success of the N8 and use its buzz to preview newer Nokia S^3 phones coming soon in Q1 like the E7, X7, and to teach the market about newer Symbian versions like 'Anna', or

b - release a memo saying Nokia phones are years behind the competitors and you announce the death of the Symbian OS.

Question 8 - You are committed this year to two paths with different partners and different ecosystems. One is open source, using industry standard tools like Linux thus being a close cousin of Android and has a carrier (the giant China Mobile) among its supporters. The other is closed, using proprietary tools, no conceivable commonality with Android and it has no carriers to support it. While you thought the MeeGo option was not commercially viable, it is now proving vibrant and strong. At the same time the WP7 option that initially seemed strong, is proving very weak and already seeing its suppliers abandoning Microsoft while the resellers have gone into boycott. You obviously

a - announce that you will shift emphasis to the ecosystem where you are in control which is most open, using industry standard tools and which has the most partners including a carrier - ie MeeGo, or

b - you announce that even as that open system is proven viable, and even as MeeGo will continue with or without Nokia, you will abandon it and rather go with the smallest, closed, ecosystem where you have no control where there are the least number of partners and where the partners themselves are abandoning the platform.

Question 9 - You surprisingly find that your N9 phone is the biggest hit phone of the summer. The reviewers are both impressed by N9 hardware, and MeeGo software. You have a second smartphone designed to work also on MeeGo, called the N950. It is ready for release for the vital Christmas season. Do you

a - ride the buzz and excitement of the N9 launch and MeeGo, and promise the N950 to hit the market as soon as possible, launched in every country and on every carrier by Christmas and rushed to all Nokia promotions now, or

b - refuse to sell the N950 in any market, and only make some prototype versions for some developers

Question 10 - Your brand is the market share leader on five of the six inhabited continents both in smartphones and dumbphones, by a wide margin. But in the US market your brand once held the lead but lost it seven years ago and today lingers in tiny market shares in both categories. Nokia's demise in the US market was not because of bad handset designs, or bad user interfaces or bad operating systems or bad ecosystems; you yourself admit the biggest key to the US market is carrier relationships which had become poisoned around year 2004, and the US carriers have carried a grudge for the past seven years. You learn in January 2011 that your US sales staff have made a long-awaited breakthrough - some say deliver a miraculous sales success - and secured a carrier deal to promote the new touch screen X7 smartphone running the newest 'Anna' version of Symbian, with none other than AT&T. The Carrier is so eager to launch this phone with Nokia, they are set to come to the world's biggest mobile telecoms industry event, the Mobile World Congress held in Barcelona in February, to a joint CEO event with you to announce the return of Nokia to the premium end of the US smartphone market. You

a - drop everything else, as the US investors more than anything else, would love a major carrier to embrace a new Nokia smartphone as a flagship phone - and this one event would establish you as the biggest hero, achieving what both of your predecessors failed to do in returning Nokia premium phones and Symbian OS to carrier supported status in the USA, or

b - you cancel the launch - yes, you Nokia cancel AT&T's launch of Nokia's X7 - and say you would rather take the stage in Barcelona with Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer, to announce a partnership which includes no carrier deals in America or anywhere else.

Question 11 - As you face a reseller boycott and your own giant smartphone factories are running idle, but as your factories are wholly owned by Nokia, it means you have highly skilled and competent handset manufacturing staff being paid for doing nothing, you have to launch a completely new smartphone running Microsoft WP7. You

a - use one of your own idle smartphone factories to manufacture the new smartphone to the highest Nokia standards of quality and manufacturing, or

b - you bypass your own factory, and go sign a contract with Compal of Taiwan, who also make 'highly successful' and 'popular' smartphones for three less-than-spectacular smartphone brands.. Motorola, HP/Palm and.. Acer.

Question 12 - You are talking of ecosystems and with them, the importance of developers. You have two future options. Nokia's 400,000 strong Symbian developer community has a decade-long history and your CTO built a migration path for the total Nokia developer community, via a set of tools called Qt, to arrive at MeeGo. The Qt tools can also be used to create apps for featurephones running Nokia S40 operating system, and to develop apps for other open Linux based platforms like.. Android. Your other future platform, Microsoft WP7 has no migration path from Symbian. It is not compatible with Qt and is not compatible in any way with Android's vast army either. In fact, Microsoft cared so little for its past developers that even Microsoft's own Windows Mobile developers do not have a migration path to WP7. Now you hear that the carriers have started a boycott of Microsoft WP7 but also that your resellers (and developers) love MeeGo. So you obviously

a - announce a shift in the strategy, where MeeGo will be the center of your strategy, especially to support the strong Nokia developer community, or

b - announce that even as MeeGo would be the best for Nokia's existing developers and WP7 the worst, you will still insist on no more MeeGo devices, and the future will be all WP7, and effectively saying like Microsoft tends to say to its developer community: "f*ck you!"

Question 13 - You have to migrate your handsets away from your current operating system to a new one. You have made your selection in February and announced your primary new smartphone OS would be WP7. Since you announced your choice, the maker of that OS, Microsoft, has suddenly acquired the one branded service that your reseller chain ie the mobile operators/carriers hate: Skype. Because of this new acquisition the carriers/operators started a boycott of Microsoft in May of 2011, and the carriers are now telling you, they will never support Microsoft based smartphones. Your whole strategy has been torpedoed by your partner, Microsoft (something it was famous for doing to all of its previous telecoms partners like Sendo, Nortel, LG and Ericsson, every one of which left previous partnership attempt with Microsoft badly damaged if not bankrupt). Do you now

a - announce you are shifting away from Microsoft because you listen to your reseller channel, the carriers, and you know they do not support this path (and because you have a credible replacement strategy in MeeGo) or

b - do you announce proudly that yes, Skype will be central to the Microsoft smartphone strategy by Nokia, to further anger the reseller channel and guarantee all Nokia phones will be boycotted not just on Symbian now, but also on WP7 in the future

Question 14 - You are the freshly-hired new CEO. You know your predecessor was fired for two reasons - one, his strategy of dumping prices led to the company arriving at the brink of making losses; and the share price crashed 55% over a 4 year period. Now you have been in charge for 9 months. The stock market rewarded your early actions of your first five months by raising share prices by 10%. But in the past 4 months, your actions have destroyed share value by another 52%. Do you now

a - say you understand. Apologize. Reverse all of the actions of the past 4 months. Abandon Microsoft. And return to that strategy which worked so well in the first five months, or

b - now adopt the same strategy of your doomed predecessor CEO with a massive price dump of 15% across the board to further accelerate the downward spiral of your share price and plummet the corporation into making ever bigger losses?

KEY TO ANSWERS

The quiz is quite particular and some might say it is controversial even. There is something thought of as 'old school' management thinking that is based on the MBA (Master of Business Administration) teaching which tends to still taught in most misguided and obsolete business schools like Harvard and Yale and Oxford and Cambridge and Insead etc. That has become completely irrelevant in a new world of Microsoft.

There is a new management philosophy which supercedes the MBA, it is the MMBA, The Microsoft Muppet Bullshit Academy which is based on the teachings of grand guru and learned leader Steve Ballmer (The Grand Microsoft Master, the man who single-handedly conquerred the whole smartphone world with ten years of Microsoft Windows Mobile; whose earthshattering Kin phones were the global hit, so popular they had to be withdrawn from sales in only six weeks; and the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 an operating system so powerful most of its handset makers are deserting the platform and the reseller channel is actively boycotting it). The head of the MMBA is of course Stephen Elop the Learned, the sharpest knife in the cabinet, the quickest brain in the business and the smoothest operator of the whole universe of telecoms.

The newer Redmond Microsoft based learnings taught at the Microsoft Muppet Bullshit Academy tell us that the ecosystem is what decides who wins. But if you already have the bigger ecosystem like Symbian, then you have to of course terminate that, and replace it with the smallest and weakest ecosystem out there like WP7. The MMBA teaches us that you have to care for your developers, but only so far, where you can then screw them so they don't have a migration path, like Microsoft so kindly did in not offering migration from Windows Mobile to Phone 7 - and if you find an ecosystem which is open source and actually has a migration path like from Symbian to MeeGo, that has to be destroyed.

The MMBA teaches us that you have to listen to the carriers, but only up to the point, that you know what will anger them the most - and then do only that. So it is not enough to find that the resellers are in boycott today. That is only step one. Then you have to listen to them so you can anger them more - so you find out they hate Dual SIM phones. So you can then tell them that yes, you'll release dual SIM phones. Tell them you'll give them West Coast designed phones like the Kin and the Razr and the Palm. And listen to them to find out what they hate more than you. When you discover that they hate something even more than the combination of Microsoft and Nokia, then go and embrace that additional part - Skype, insisting it will be integral to all Microsoft based Nokia phones.

There is the overwhelming logic of the Microsoft Muppet Bullshit Academy, by which if you find something is so hated by the shareholders that they punish you with a declining market share, the correct response is of course to do even more of that. This is where Dick Cheney went astray and didn't follow through. He didn't 'stay the course'. He was the surrender-monkey who didn't 'surge'. Its not enough that you go hunting with your friend, take a shotgun and shoot your friend.. in the face, the true Microsoft Muppet way is then not to apologize, but to reload, and shoot again.. your friend.. in the face.. and repeat, and repeat. This is the MMBA way.

This is how Stephen Elop has run Nokia. February. Burning Platforms (utter lies) Bam! Reload. Will end Symbian and go Microsoft. Bam. Reload. Will not do MeeGo. Bam. Reload. Kill migration path for developer community. Bam. Reload. Carriers in sales boycott. Fine. I'll do Dual SIM. Bam. Reload. Didn't like that? Fine. We'll do Skype also. Double-barrel Bam! Reload. What? Now you have Microsoft WP7 also in boycott? No problem. We will still do WP7, with Skype, even with the boycott. Bam. Reload. And the N9 is a hit phone? Won't be long. Let me show you the new WP7 phone, please you tech bloggers, don't go showing pictures of it, eh? Bam. Reload. MeeGo still desirable? Go ahead punk. Do you feel lucky? You want MeeGo? I'll show you 'mee-go' here: Bam! Reload. You want the N9 with MeeGo in a major Nokia market like the UK or Germany or India or Brazil. I won't give it to youBam! . Reload. Most of the countries where it will be sold will be teeny-weeny lilliput countries so it can't achieve big sales. Bam. Reload. And if by some chance, the N9 is still a hit phone, I won't release more MeeGo phones anyway. Bam. Reload. Bam. Reload. Share price crashing? No problem. I'll now slash Nokia smartphone prices 15%. Bam. Reload

(I worry what comes tomorrow. I mean. 15% price cut? This IS what got OPK fired by the Board. How utterly incompetent a fool is he, Stephen Elop the Microsoft Muppet)

Nokia Board! Time to fire Stephen Elop. He is singlehandedly destroying your company. You are incompetent Board Members if you let him continue destroying the company like this. It is clear Stephen Elop will face a lawsuit for deliberate, wanton destruction of Nokia value. Soon you, Board Members, if you don't act fast, are also going to be sued for incompetence for letting Elop ruin your company. Do not wait anymore! Fire him now! Time to act is NOW!

Comments

[Robert]

Tomi,
Been following this ongoing trainwreck since the Feb 11 Burning Platform memo. Not involved w. the mobile community, but this is compelling from standpoint of - a business case study. Surely it will be studied for decades, the seemingly wanton destruction of Nokia, and the end of M$ as a mobile platform developer.
Elop and Ballmer will both likely be replaced soon; the BoD's just can't let those clowns continue squandering shareholder value.
Sorry for Nokia, but would be sweet to see Ballmer publicly fired in total humiliation and disgrace. What a jerk. When Win7 phone is finally abandoned like the Kin and Zune, M$ should likely be out of partners willing to dance with the devil.
Really enjoy your writing - looking forward to continued coverage of this industry.

[Raymond]

Thanks, I learnt much. Why Nokia go with licence wp7 when Symbian development and meego development is free. Zero cost at all. Many staff actually volunteer workers. Also the pace at which Symbian and meego grows is solo fast. I mean 8 months to make a portrait qwerty is an a dilute record speed. Symbian^3 looks so modern and was so loved with its refreshed modern interface. The speedy timely updates are a joy. And e7 and x7 are totally way better than say the sgsii which is no competition. Better hardware and on the world popular Symbian. Many more things I learn but posting from mobile.

[Vinícius]

Raymond, you're actually right about volunteer work for MeeGo. Just see Maemo and you will see that there ARE a lot of people willing to work for free for the good of Open Source.

Also, Symbian and Nokia are still better than most competition. I'd rather have an n8 than most other phones on the market. Because of
1: Camera, no one does cameras as nokia does. Even the EDOF units are better than 99% of the market.
2: Battery Life.
3: FM TX.
4: Hardware quality. Good Mic, audio quality, signal strenght, GPS lock (Samsung SG2 has problems with it, as did SG1), pentaband gsm and much more.
5: True multi-tasking, this is crutial for me and a lot of people.

That said I own an n900 and will probably buy an n9 regardless. Open source community will do the rest, you will see those volunteer workers can do better than most companies, that's the beauty of open source.

And I can't wait till ELOP is FIRED and we can have Nokia back, launching not only the n9 as the primary phone, but the n950 along with it and many more MeeGo pocket PCs (Maemo and Meego are more akin to PC OS than smartphone OS).

[@rodrigottr]

I've to confess something.

Every morning I wake up and look on twitter: what kind of intelligently STUPID thing has Elop done today?

Can't wait to see why @staska would choose all letter Bs and his reasons... hahahaha

[JCMont]

Entertaining post Tomi!

[@rodrigottr]

@Tomi

On your next post you could invert what you are doing. Instead of showing how Elop is mismanaging Nokia, show how they are mismanaging Microsoft.

A good parasite doesn't suck it's victims energy to the point of death. It just sucks till the point both can live.

In the desperate eagerness of saving Microsoft from it's prison on PC's and ensuring a path for Microsoft to mobile computing they will end by killing their last chance.

Instead they should run that quietly, without anyone notice. Keeping MeeGo, keeping, Symbian. Bringing WP quietly just for experimenting and, with time, do the changing they wanted.

What is going on is simply a funny and ridiculous scandal!

[Nok_fan]

HATE!

[@don_afrim]

There is something fishy about this whole thing. The Board is ALLOWING this fool to destroy Nokia, it's as if they have no other choice. Are they at gun point? Somehow someone wants to destroy the only European tech company that's left. Somehow someone wants to destroy the only major operating system (Symbian/MeeGo) that's under European control. If you look at the OS world market share (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, webOS, WP7, Symbian and BB), 90% is under American control and with the diminish of Symbian and BB that number will go up to 99%.

[Harry in Singapore]

Exactly from what you have written about what Stephen Elop have done at Nokia, I feel that he is doing a GREAT job at Nokia to enable it to survive this hard period; grow and be great again.

1. Focus on selling a single "value" that Nokia has to offer. Nokia's is more than just a Phone OS or hardware. It's the entire "experience" of owning and using a mobile device and hopefully it would be enjoyable than that closed Apple iPhone.

As a competent user of mobile phones and one of the earliest adopter of the then new Nokia Communicator, I believe very strongly that with a competent Leader, Nokia can be the Number 1 Mobile Device Company again.

2. Mr Elop's actions, to me, are that of a Strong Leader that is facing CRITICAL challenges that either kills Nokia or propel it to Greatness again. I am now using an Android; refused to buy the iPhone and I look forward to buy my first Nokia Windows Phone.

3. The previous Nokia was inert; accumulated lots of user preferences but unable to execute the ideas into products or services and simply had too many people. It was frustrating to even read about it and even worst, to experience it.

4. All the great intentions and hope that simply remained as that!! What a shame then.

5. Nokia needs to be able to execute its plans. I see Mr Elop doing this now.

6. Please don't get me wrong. I love Nokia and I want to be a Nokia customer again; and will be the first to broadcast to everyone how good the new Nokia Windows phone is, esp with Nokia's services on it.

[Baudrillard]

Elop has placed some of his own Muppets on the board so there's no stopping them!

Why not release the 1Ghz upcoming Symbian phones to instead run MeeGo????

Why only one MeeGo phone????

MeeGo is pure Linux and can be ported to run on anything!

This is a suicide mission by Elop on behalf of Microsoft. All or nothing and it's looking more and more like NOTHING!

Nokia can't afford to let this idiot continue destroying their brand like this!

[Bjorn]

@Harry in Singapor

Harry, I do agree with you that strong leadership is crutial in rough times and I do agree that the leader has to point out the right direction and have everyone follow him there. However, the leader needs to have a sence of direction otherwise it can all end in disaster. Based on what Tomi writes and what my gut tells me I must say that Mr Elop right now reminds me of the head lemming heading for the ocean =/

[Tee]

I've been lucky to be able to spend a little bit of time with both a very fresh development version of Symbian and the new N9, and whatever trust I had for Elop's strategic decisions regarding Nokia vanished.

You see, Symbian Anna and Symbian Belle are both a definite improvement. And the N9 seems to be everything Nokia ever needed to take back its share of the market. And Nokia even has a clear strategy for developers being able to produce apps for both platforms at once. But even while Nokia has gotten its stuff back together, Elop has been working in the shadows for half a year perfecting a strategy that now seems just plain foolish. He's placing the corporation's future on something that the carriers and device makers hate, developers and users distrust and Microsoft has problems making usable.

Mister Elop: WP7 is not even a burning platform; it's an unfinished platform, and you're renting it before it's even ready, placing your company's future in the hands of another company. It is clear to everyone now that you didn't come to lead Nokia with Nokia's best interest in mind - you came in with a Microsoft bias, and that bias will cost you and all Nokia employees their future. You of course will get a nice bonus for it; the rest will just have to suffer through it all.

[RR]

Wow, just wow. This blog went from pure scientificly based to just rant after rant after rant. There is no real information in this post, just like the one with the songtext a few days ago.

Seriously, Tomi was one reputed source a while ago with near spot on analysis. But the hate that's seeping from every corner of this blog lately made it horrendous to read here.

BTW; Elop hasn't done all the right things in his strategy. But the all out blaming and finger pointing is just weak.

[Michael]

You are missing one very important point. The whole mess Nokia is in was brought by OPK along with his board. Let's be honest. The board of Nokia is incapable of making any decision. The team which stayed with OPK should have resigned. You can only argue if they are incapable or lazy. Why don't write an article about OPK's board and their role in Nokia's dall in the years of 2007-2011.

History has shown us that when companies reach stage which Nokia reached last year you need someone who is capable of making critical and important decisions. Mr. Elop will either live by the sword or die by it. At least someone had guts to speak his opinion.

All those executives at Nokia at critical positions rally have no clue. As Nokia's world was crumbling last year Mr. Niklos Savander was telling the crowd at Nokia World fairy tales about Symbian being no: 1. Anssi Vanjoki was convincing everybody how "BIG" E9 is. On top of that you have Markko Ahtisaari having whole philosophical discussion about "to be, or not to be - the home button enigma".

The whole Nokia's Symbian position is wrong. Simply, the customers don't want it. It's old technology. The same way customers ditched casette tapes, commodere 64, atari or CRT's they are now ditching Symbian. We are not talking Beta which was technologically more advance but marketing/business/licences buried it.

Look how hard it is for Google to set up competition to Facebook. With all the money and resources they are finding it almost impossible. Simply "the train has left the station", same way as N9 has left the station. No matter how wonderful it is (despite the fact it might need some time to have it finished and polished) it would be extremely difficult for Nokia to have it up there competing with iOS and Android. Microsoft, which is a software company, is having trouble gaining market share with WP7, and you expect Symbian to grow with few new icons?

[Rino]

Tomi... Clap Clap Clap, for you, very, very funny and simple method to find an incompetent CEO, I enjoy your post, - Nokia Members Bord, they know this quiz!. :-(

[Matthew Artero]

A replacement rate of 18 months means that 66% of phones in use are being replaced every year. The 1.38 billion phones sold last year is only 32% of the 4.3 billion phones in use.

[RR]

@Leebase

Skype is no reason to boycot anything. If it were to be than MS would simply cut out Skype functionality over 3G for example. Just like they cut out tethering at the mercy of the telco's.

Tomi's implications of it being a major problem are baseless so far. MS won't be so stupid that they will sacrifice carrier love over something like Skype integration of which at this point is even no sign in Windows Phone.

[MyNokiaN900]

Bear in mind the board of Nokia hired Elop. If Elop is making bad decisions, then the board is making them too. Yes, he is the CEO, but he has to answer to the board or the shareholders as well. One man cannot be responsible for the failure of the company. Impossible! Perhaps the previous CEO screwed the company up and now it takes someone like Elop to step in and make some tough decisions. Still I don't believe it's just him making these decisions. It's a collection of people making bad decisions or good decisions. In the short term they must have a plan, as someone pointed out, how could the let a company that once dominated the world of mobile, just crash and burn. There must be a plan.

I am not a lover of Windows or Windows phones, but I cannot believe all the smart people at Nokia could let a wonderful company go down the tube.

[Kalle]

As an independent developer of mobile phone apps I find Nokias actions intolerable. While Apple has a steady platform and so does Google, nobody knows what Nokias platform will be. If it is Microsoft, will I bet my time and fortunes upon speculation whether MS/Nokia phones will float or sink? I've used Microsoft development tools and they are better than what Symbian tools and Nokia made a huge mistake not fixing them and the SDK stable and fun to code on. Still, even if Ms/Nokia floats, what will I do meanwhile? I'm not going to start developing software for platform that doesn't have customers. I have to get paid. My options are Apple, Google or Symbian at the moment. What is common with these platforms? Of course that they are already established ecosystem. When I put a free app onto Ovi store I got 20000 downloads in a month from 131 countries (unfortunately paid content isn't as popular). Is there anything like that possible in current Microsoft ecosystem? I don't think so.

[Jukka]

I believe that MS and Nokia aim for Windows 8 and 2012. Mango is just for filling in a gap.